{"id":2560,"date":"2004-09-17T13:21:22","date_gmt":"2004-09-17T18:21:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2560.html"},"modified":"2004-09-17T13:21:22","modified_gmt":"2004-09-17T18:21:22","slug":"now-bush-is-worried-about-big-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/now-bush-is-worried-about-big-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Now Bush is worried about ‘big government’"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is rich<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seeking to gain ground against Sen. John Kerry, President Bush said Thursday that his Democratic opponent “wants to expand government” in education, health care, taxes and virtually every other area of domestic policy. <\/p>\n

“We have a difference of philosophy in this campaign,” Bush told supporters. “It’s a clear difference: my opponent’s programs will expand government. Our programs will expand opportunity.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s one of those charges that’s so transparently silly, it makes me wonder if the Kerry campaign made it up to make Bush look ridiculous.<\/p>\n

Bush, after campaigning in support of limited government four years ago, has expanded the federal government’s role in education to unprecedented heights through his No Child Left Behind law. He’s expanded federal funding in Medicare and sort-of created a new entitlement aspect to the program. He expanded the government’s role in elections by signing McCain-Feingold into law (despite earlier promises to the contrary). He’s increased the federal government’s role in corporate accounting after the Enron debacle, trade policy with steel tarrifs, and law enforcement with the Patriot Act. Bush even expanded the executive branch with a new Cabinet post.<\/p>\n

The size of the federal workforce is higher now than at any point since the end of the Cold War, while federal spending has risen higher and faster — both in real dollars and as a percentage of GDP — under Bush than with Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n

But we have to make sure Bush has another term because Kerry<\/i> might “expand government.” If Bush intended this to be some kind of joke, the punch line didn’t make any sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is rich. Seeking to gain ground against Sen. John Kerry, President Bush said Thursday that his Democratic opponent “wants to expand government” in education, health care, taxes and virtually every other area of domestic policy. “We have a difference of philosophy in this campaign,” Bush told supporters. “It’s a clear difference: my opponent’s programs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}